What If the Best App-Based Car Stereo Is the Smartphone?

The current crop of car stereos that work with apps mostly do so by interfacing with your smartphone. Observe, as we test cars capable of connecting to MOG and Pandora through an iPhone. In those cases, the car’s standard dashboard hardware controls the apps, and displays the content — albums, artists, songs, and so on — on its dashboard.

Dash – the Smart phone Car Stereo [sic], from Devium, takes a different approach. Currently a Kickstarter project that has attained $1,030 of its crowd-funding goal of $45,000, Dash puts the phone physically into the car’s dashboard, where it can charge and, of course, run music apps.

[Update 5:47pm ET: @BriahTraudt points us towards the iRoc, which works in a similar way.]

This approach isn’t as safe as using a dashboard with controls designed to be operated with scant visual feedback at 75 mph, but it might also prove less costly. Additional controls are not required beyond the smartphone — well, almost. The Dash does have a volume knob.